Am 2000-06-06 um 01:43 h (GMT-0800) hat rampshot@usa.net geschrieben:
> the obsolete form of lowercase s (U+017F)
In Fraktur (~ Blackletter), and in old-style German handwriting, German
orthography discriminates between two different small-S letters, the
"round S", U+0073, and the "long S", U+017F.
As said several times in this list, this is an orthographic feature,
not a matter of font variants; i. e., the spelling with either long
or round is not arbitrary, and cannot even be decided algorithmically
from the Antiqua (roman) spelling alone, as it depends on pronounciation
(related to the meaning). The notorious minimal pair is:
Spelling Pronounciation Meaning
Wachstube /'vakstu:b/ Wax tube
Wachtube /'vaxtu:b/ Guard room
Hence, to adequetely spell German plain text intended for, or trans-
scribed from, Fraktur printing, you need both long and round S.
While old-style German handwriting is indeed almost obsolete now,
Fraktur is contemporarily used (if not to say: increasingly popular):
- In official printing: the German bank notes have the word "Banknote"
printed in Fraktur -- though without any S :-)
Cf. ,
and the parody in .
- In the titles of many newspapers:
cf. (renowned paper, though without an S),
(two round S),
(two long S),
and, to complement the collection of S-letters,
(sharp S, aka Eszet, in both Fraktur and Antiqua),
(an uppercase S),
and last but not least, the haute école,
(a long, and a round, S, as appropriate).
- In advertising, particularly for restaurants, pubs, beer;
cf. (long S).
- For typographical or artistic reasons.
So, I do not deem the Long S obsolete (as many of you already know).
Best wishes,
Otto Stolz